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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla Roadmap Update 242

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
wikinerd writes "According to a recent roadmap update for Mozilla, the beta 1.8 version will be unveiled this month, while in the next month a second beta will be prepared. After the Beta2, Gecko engine 1.8 will be finished and it will power Mozilla 1.8, Mozilla Firefox 1.1 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.1. The developers will then start working on Mozilla 1.9. Here are some nice graphics depicting the roadmap."
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Mozilla Roadmap Update More

Mozilla Roadmap Update

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  • Does anyone know what new features will be available in 1.1? I know i know, I could have RTFA..but me too lazy..

    • Re:What new features in 1.1? (Score:4, Informative)

      by eln ( 21727 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:07PM (#11564931)
      Most likely the primary feature will be the Gecko 1.8 engine. It seems to be the primary purpose for the release, and there may not be any other new features at all except maybe some scattered bugfixes.
      • Also, (yet another) prefs window rewrite is expected. The new cookie manager (finally groups cookies by domain) looks good; too bad we can't try it yet. (It's on a branch, i.e., not in the nightlies)

    • Mozilla vs FireFox (Score:3, Interesting)

      by martok ( 7123 )

      I recently started using FireFox at home and am wondering if someone would mind explaning the difference between Mozilla and FireFox. I understand they're both free software projects and are based on the same core technology. Why are there then two browsers? Is it simply a code fork?

      • Re:Mozilla vs FireFox (Score:4, Informative)

        by temojen ( 678985 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:10PM (#11564985) Journal
        Firefox is a browser. Mozilla is a Browser, Email reader, usenet reader, page composer, IRC client, and a few other things.
      • Mozilla is a suite of tools that includes a browser, e-mail program, web site authoring, and IRC chat. Firefox, comparatively, is just the browser component and a few UI and relatively minor functionality differences from the Mozilla suite.

        If you find you need the complete suite, that's the way to go. On the other hand, if you're like others who are stuck with Outlook for one reason or another, Firefox is the better choice.
      • Briefly:

        Firefox is ONLY a browser while Mozilla in addition to being a development platform, is a combination of a Gecko based browser, e-mail client, a news reader and a calender program. I understand several other functionalities may be in the works.

      • Re:Mozilla vs FireFox (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 ( 812236 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:15PM (#11565055) Journal
        Firefox is an attempt at seperating the browser component of Mozilla, and hopefully making it smaller, more portable, and more memory-efficient.

        The rendering engine for both Seamonkey (the Mozilla Suite) and Firefox remains the same, the Gecko rendering engine. What differs is the UI, the functionality and large parts of the codebase.

        Originally, Firefox, and Thunderbird, were scheduled to replace Seamonkey, but after some developers voiced their concerns over this, the Mozilla Foundation has decided against this move.

        In short, it's not so much as code fork as it is a functionality fork. Firefox is geared towards IE/Opera/Safari users, while Seamonkey is geared towards old school Navigator/Netscape/Mozilla users.

    • Re:What new features in 1.1? (Score:5, Informative)

      by goofyspouse ( 817551 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:08PM (#11564942)
      From http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/roadmap.ht ml :

      We are still working on goals for 2.0 and are drafting a PRD for its development. Some likely goals include:

      * Improvements to Bookmarks/History
      * Per-Site Options
      * Enhancements to the Extensions system, Find Toolbar, Software Update, Search and other areas.
      * Accessibility compliance
      * More ... ?

      (Note: placing an item on this list does not mean it will not be complete until 2.0, rather we would like to be done by 2.0, it may be implemented by 1.1, 1.5 or 2.0)

    • Re:What new features in 1.1? (Score:5, Informative)

      by davron05 ( 778470 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:15PM (#11565056)
      From the Unofficial Firefox 1.1 changelog [squarefree.com]:
      New features
      * 245392 - Installer options for where to put start menu / desktop / quick launch shortcut icons.
      * 231062 - Provide Firefox MSI package.

      Major improvements

      * 124561 - Anonymous ftp login failure should prompt for username/password.
      * 98564 - Caret overlaps the last character in textfield (if positioned after the last char).
      * 151375 - Focus outline should be drawn outside of element.
      * 133165 - Focus outline should include larger descendants of inline elements.
      * 65917 - :active neither hierarchical nor picky about what can be activated.
      * 175893 - Make XUL 's focusable.
      * 20022 - :hover state not set until mouse move.
      * 276588 - Rework toolkit command-line handling. You can now open local files easily from the command-line (e.g. firefox.exe README.txt), and command-line switches should do the same thing whether Firefox is running or not.
      * 95227 - Make it possible to set different default font type (serif vs sans serif) for different languages.
      * 16940 - [Windows] IME is now disabled for password fields.
      * 151249 - [Mac] Middle click on link does nothing on Mac OS X (should open link in new tab).
      * 242845 - [Mac] Firefox disk image should use .dmg internal zlib-compression, not .dmg.gz.
      * 238854 - [GTK2] Changing GNOME2 theme doesn't apply until restarting Mozilla.

      And yes, they are also targeting the famous Slashdot rendering bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2175 27). Copy&paste the link to your browser since diredt linking to bugzilla from slashdot doesn't work.

      • I'm amazed that what I consier to be a HUGE security issue hasn't been addressed.

        If you open 2 tabs, and the background one has an applet of any type, the applet can grab the actions from the visible tab, redraw the visible tab and so on.

        I'm surprised that a 'slashdot rendering' bug makes it into the list when a REALLY, REALLY dangerous vulnerability is present. I have seen quite a few bug reports about it, and I tried posting my own, but alas, no response.

        I feel a bit like the dude who posted his bug

    • slashdot.org will be diplayed OK, if you call this a feature.
      • I use Firefox (v1.0) exclusively, and load up slashdot several times per day, yet I have only encountered the bug maybe 3 times since the release of v1.0. Who are these people that see it all the time, and what are they doing with their computers?
        • I have a Very Slow Connection relative to most Slashdot users, and I see it all the time. It's related to reflow, so people who have lowered their reflow delays will see it on much faster connections; I see it with the standard reflow value. There's an extension called "SlashFix" that initiates a reflow as soon as any page from slashdot.org has finished loading, which is an elegant workaround (even if it makes those of us on slow connections have to wait for the whole comments section to load before seeing

  • Are they saying... (Score:4, Funny)

    by goofyspouse ( 817551 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:02PM (#11564875)
    ...that Firefox 1.0 can be improved upon?

  • Wasn't Mozilla (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Grey Clone ( 770110 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:05PM (#11564915) Homepage
    Wasn't the Mozilla All-In-One browser supposed to be disbanded and effort placed into Firefox a while back? Are they going to continue delaying and delaying this? I tried to read the article, but it didn't seem to say. I'm curious as to how many people still use Mozilla, anyway.
    • They were then they changed their mind. Of course, I read that in a Slashdot comments page (several times actually, this question comes up on every Mozilla article)...
    • I was about to say the same thing. They were supposed to end dev on the Mozilla suite quite a while back. But perhaps they are referring to the browser engine itself and not the Mozilla suite as such.

    • Re:Wasn't Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BW_Nuprin ( 633386 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:09PM (#11564963)
      The Mozilla Suite may not be disbanded, but how many people even know about it anyway? Its got its little niche, but whether or not it truly "goes away" now seems irrelevant. Firefox is the focus of all the publicity, and the Suite goes on about its business on its own.
      • I believe companies that back up the Mozilla foundation (financially) are in favor of the Mozilla suite at a whole.

      • Re:Wasn't Mozilla (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The Mozilla Suite may not be disbanded, but how many people even know about it anyway?

        Maybe that's because the Mozilla Foundation decided to put DOWNLOAD FIREFOX as the most prominent link on mozilla.org while it was still in 0.x stages? Or because they supported the Spread Firefox campaign without any Spread Mozilla campaign? Or because they spent lots of money on a Firefox advert but nothing on a Mozilla advert?

    • Both groups are still working. The difference is one group hypes its product while the other doesn't.
    • I noticed that all our website testers use it, except when they are specifically testing other browsers. I don't know specifically what part they use, but I'm guessing because of Venkman (link [mozilla.org]) It's available on Firefox now too I guess, but they've been using moz for well before firefox was ever released.
    • Maybe they just can't bear the idea of the Mozilla Foundation not carrying a product called Mozilla, and they can't bear the idea of abandoning the Mozilla name altogether in a foundation whose very existence is thanks to Netscape, whose mascot was Mozilla.

      Mozilla is a more versatile mascot than that weird orange fox swooshy-thingy anyway.

    • Re:Wasn't Mozilla (Score:3, Interesting)

      by EzInKy ( 115248 )
      I'm curious as to how many people still use Mozilla, anyway.

      I doubt we can know for sure but I'm sure there are quite a few, possibly even more than use Firefox. One of the reasons I stuck with Netscape when IE came out back in my Windows days was its integration of common tasks such as browsing, reading email and newsgroups, etc.
      • Use these statistics from W3 Schools [w3schools.com] with a grain of salt, but it looks like Mozilla makes up 4% of the browser market compared to Firefox's 19%.

        Personaly I still use Mozilla because I've noticed sometimes when you bring up Firefox from the taskbar it takes 5-10 seconds before it becomes usable again. This was a problem back in 0.4/0.5 and still is a problem in 1.0. I don't think it's ever happened to me in Mozilla.

    • Re:Wasn't Mozilla (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Omniscientist ( 806841 ) * <`matt' `at' `badecho.com'> on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:24PM (#11565150) Homepage
      I still use Mozilla, Mozilla 1.7.5 with gtk2+xft x86_64 build. The reason I use Mozilla is because all I have to do is download one program and I get the browser and an email client.

      Now the reason why Mozilla Foundation is still making Mozilla is because Mozilla is aimed at vendors who will customize Mozilla to include the necessary or wanted features. We all know Mozilla has an big amount of features, many of which we never use, so the idea is that there would be some sort of vendor or someone making a distro who would customize it properly for its users/customers. Firefox is aimed at the end-user exclusively.

      • I don't use the same program for email and web browsing. I got burned a few too many times with that. Lost quite a few pieces of email when Browser revision X had a problem importing email from version W. I also don'y like having to upgrade my perfectly usable email client because my browser is out of date.
    • Development happens in the trunk not necessarily for the Mozilla Suite but so that all of the Mozilla projects share the parts that they should share. This roadmap, for example, is showing trunk development leading to Firefox 1.1 based on Gecko 1.8 in the trunk, which also applies to Thunderbird and presumably to an eventual suite 1.8 release not shown. Even if the Mozilla All-In-One browser isn't very relevant, the Mozilla library suite is important, because everyone who uses Firefox uses that.
  • Is it just me or is that graphic totally unnecessary?

    • Re:Graphic (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Verteiron ( 224042 ) *
      In order to attract attention from anyone not already familiar with the concept of a software roadmap, you need pretty pictures. Think corporate decision-makers, executives, rich people that want to give Mozilla some money, that sort of thing. Presenting yourself and your product professionally is important, even if it means extra useless charts and diagrams.

  • Composer? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slim ( 1652 ) <{john} {at} {hartnup.net}> on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:07PM (#11564929) Homepage
    Now we have Firefox, the only time I load up Mozilla is when I want to use Composer. It's far from perfect (that poxy <p>$lt;br> problem!) but it's a free WYSYWIG HTML editor withoout too many frills or complexities, and it throws out reasonably tidy HTML which can be cleaned up by hand much more easily than (say) Frontpage output.

    So what's the future for Composer? I'd love to have it either as a standalone alongside Firefox and Thunderbird, or as an extension to Firefox.

    I notice that Thunderbird contains vestiges of Composer (e.g. CSS styles for display modes no longer available)...

  • The Roadmap Made Easy... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:09PM (#11564961) Homepage Journal
    The Map [dragonswest.com]

  • Wee:) (Score:5, Funny)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:09PM (#11564966) Homepage
    They should make the gecko do the robot in the about window.

  • I hope they improve on the Mac version (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slutsker ( 804955 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:10PM (#11564979) Homepage
    I use Firefox for my Mac, and I have used it for a while now. However, I have found it to use up a godly amount of memory, which sometimes leads to crashes on my mere 512 MB machine. I noticed the 1.0 version was better than the 0.9 version at this, and I hope the 1.1 version is even better.

    Anyway, I'm just wondering... does anyone else have these memory problems on their Mac's, or is it just me?
    • Not a clue. I've only just gotten a Mini (haven't ordered new memory for it yet, so it's still at 256MB). I do notice a lot of hard drive swapping going on, but I've not noticed if it's worse while Firefox is running or not. Where do I find memory usage stats in OS X?
      • Where do I find memory usage stats in OS X?

        Run "Activity Monitor" in /Applications/Utilities/

        Click the "System Memory" tab near the bottom. You can also set the Dock Icon to show memory usage if you like via the menus. Select:

        Monitor -> Dock Icon -> Show Memory Usage

        There are also a number of third party tools that will show such info. I like "Menu Meters". Get it from macupdate.com or versiontracker.com.

    • The memory consumption issues kept me away from firefix for a long, long time. Whether on MS XP or GNU/Linux systems, the result was always the same: after a day of heavy usage, Firefox was slow, slow, slow. Memory consumption was always higher than any other program I used. As it neared the 1.0 stage, the memory usage became better. Not ideal, but better.

      Sorry I cannot corroborate your Mac usage, except state the same happens on other platforms.
    • I haven't noticed, and I only have 256MB. The only time I have problems is when I'm handling very large images (~85MB tiffs).

    • Re:I hope they improve on the Mac version (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Version 1.1 is going to be mostly dedicated to Mac fixes. Then new features and bug fixes are being aimed at 1.5

      There will be _some_ new features in 1.1 (Like the new options window), but from my understand it is mostly to clean up the Mac issues that they know about

  • Slashdot fix in 1.1 (Score:3, Informative)

    by TechnologyX ( 743745 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:13PM (#11565020) Journal
    Before anyone evens grabs the oblig. "Yeah but it still can't display Slashdot right!!oneone!1" post, the fix is in the pipeline for 1.1. And it's a race condition with Firefox, not with /.
    • Sure, cos /. is following all involved html standards, right? No. Both needs/needed correction.
      • Well yeah, I never said that /.'s HTML was correct, but the bug itself is a condition in Firefox that involved table overflows and painting. Sometimes Gecko would try to render the table without receiving all the data ( slow connections mostly ) and it would cause the weird overflow problem.

        Personally, I've never seen it, but I'm on cable, so the whole page loads all at once.
    • But if it only happens on Firefox, it's a condition that applies to Firefox. Firefox should be able to handle such HTML. The other browsers do, even Opera. Saying "the fix is coming" in every article after every month is getting annoying.

  • And where does Sunbird fit into all of this ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DARKFORCE123 ( 525408 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:13PM (#11565024)
    I don't see Sunbird in any of those slides. We still seem to be far away from a complete Outlook replacement that is stable enough to pitch to people. I would think replacing Outlook would be a good investment of resources.

  • But can it render Slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Duncan3 ( 10537 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:13PM (#11565027) Homepage
    I just want to know if Firefox 1.1 will support rendering Slashdot?

    Just an idea, absurd I know, but... since every OTHER site I visit works great with the fox, so maybe somebody should stop posting dupes and fix the HTML?

    Yea, too absurd...

  • Firefox security updates? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sjonke ( 457707 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:17PM (#11565079) Journal
    The only official release of Firefox is 1.0. There are a number of outstanding security flaws in Firefox 1.0 as reported by Secunia [secunia.com] and none have been addressed yet. I don't know if there is a nightly release that fixes these flaws, but even if there is, those are not the releases that Mom and Pop download, and it is that type of user that tends to be affected most by security flaws. Doesn't the Firefox/Mozilla team need to release a version 1.0.1 that fixes these flaws sooner rather than later? Unfortunately there is no 1.0.1 on the road map, and version 1.1 is not scheduled to be released until June, if it is on time. By then the oldest unpatched flaw, from August 2004, will be 10 months old! While the severity of current flaws is nowhere near MSIE territory, the age of unpatched flaws will be getting into MSIE territory (well, somewhat, anyway.)

    • Re:Firefox security updates? (Score:5, Informative)

      by algae ( 2196 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:40PM (#11565337)
      I'm using FireFox 1.0, and everytime i've seen a security hole announced, an auto-updater pops up within a day or so to install the hot-fix. It's a little green arrow right under the title bar.
      • I have not seen this. I just tried starting up Firefox and no pop-up update was presented, no link below the toolbar. I do see now that there is a "Software Update" feature in the preferences, but even running this manually turns up no updates. I'm running it on Mac OS X.
      • I'm pretty sure there haven't been any security hotfixes for Firefox 1.0. There was one for Firefox 0.9.x. Perhaps you were getting new versions of extensions you had installed, rather than hotfixes for Firefox itself?
    • They all seem to involve some fairly convulted attacks. Get someone to open a trusted website in a tab from an untrusted website? They are all like this. Sure some phsihing scheme might be able to hijack something, but it is simple to just do as they advise and don't have anything else open while going to your bank website.

    • Some of those security issues have been fixed in the nightly builds, but right now the nightlies have a whole whack of regressions that make them pretty close to unusable.

      Usually the nightlies are quite usable, but after 1.0 was released they merged in all the Mozilla 1.x changes that had happened in the last 8 months or so, which brought about a whole load of regressions. I expect you'll be able to get more usable nightlies of Firefox 1.1 in a couple weeks leading up to the developer preview. (Also these

  • I like Firefox, and occasionally use it in lieu of Safari on my iBook. However, it has one major shortcoming IMHO: the lack of built in functionality for the middle scroll button. Now, I know you can program it in using a driver program, but that's unsatisfactory and leaves it lacking.

    I've heard promises of future compliance w/ the middle click to open a new tab, but I hope they pull through and it does happen. Until then, Firefox just can't hold its own with Safari, as the middle-click button is a feature

  • Where's the freakin' roadmap?? (Score:4, Informative)

    by amake ( 673443 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @02:28PM (#11565206) Homepage
    If you wanted to see the actual roadmap itself, starting at this /. article you had to wade through not one, not two, but three intermediate sites to get to it. Thanks a lot for not putting a direct link [mozilla.org] anywhere in the article, guys.
  • Will we ever see a composer replacement? I still use the suite for the composer--

  • No need to wait (Score:3, Informative)

    by paul248 ( 536459 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @03:58PM (#11566236) Homepage
    A lot of the new and fixed stuff (including the /. rendering bug) is already available in the nightly builds. I wouldn't install a nightly for Grandma, but they're definitely very usable by anyone of sufficient geekdom:

    http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nig htly/latest-trunk/ [mozilla.org]

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